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Choose Firefox Now, Or Later You Won't Get A Choice (2014)

robert.ocallahan.org

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Re: Choose Firefox Now, Or Later You Won't Get A Choice (2014)

#71

Post by TulliusCicero »

jonchang wrote: post #49
g00gler wrote: post #37

Why should I use Firefox, or any other browser, from a standard consumer prospective? Let me preface this by saying I am open to a new browser, especially one that is always in "incognito" and doesn't share sessions between tabs/windows. My favorite is Lynx but that doesn't always work . Facebook & Messenger for Android is pretty much spyware and they have over 1B downloads each, so that takes spying out of the discu…

> Why should I use Firefox, or any other browser, from a standard consumer prospective? Because your techie friends tell you to. This moved people off of IE6 to Firefox and this is what initially got people to move to Chrome from Firefox. Google's muscle on its web properties did the rest. Even you admit that Chrome is only marginally better on all benchmarks. For me, it's worth it to help your non-technical friends…

Firefox was superior to IE 6 even back when it was called Phoenix. The user experience was just SO much better.

Re: Choose Firefox Now, Or Later You Won't Get A Choice (2014)

#72

Post by bigbugbag »

_hao wrote: post #39
Yoric wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what people don't know can't hurt them, right? More seriously, there is a battlefield on the web. Since the demise of Opera, Firefox is the only mainstream browser left standing that actively attempts to not violate your privacy. This doesn't mean that Firefox developers don't need to work on ways to make Firefox the best browser – incidentally, Firefox in January 2017 is orders of magnitude better than Firefox i…

Opera was and still is the best and most innovative browser.

It used to be but the current opera has 0 innovation in it, it even dropped the innovating par the previous opera had to make the switch to being a google chrome clone.

vivaldi is the browser from opera founder which strive to recreate this innovation and more.

As the company refused to open source the old opera, there is an open source project to recreate it: otter[2].

[1]: https://vivaldi.com/ [2]: https://otter-browser.org/

Re: Choose Firefox Now, Or Later You Won't Get A Choice (2014)

#73

Post by redditmigrant »

abhpan27 wrote: post #13

People choose firefox over IE because firefox was better. People choose chrome over firefox and IE because chrome is better. Want to beat google? create better. Not negativity.

I think it can start with developers choosing firefox over chrome. Hackers were the first people to try out linux, when it was sub-par, didnt have most drivers. If not for those initial few foragers, we would still be stuck with Windows for most of our computing. Change in this space hardly ever starts because someone made the most consumer friendly, best performing piece of software. Change starts by the way of foragers who become contributors that leads to improved performance.

Re: Choose Firefox Now, Or Later You Won't Get A Choice (2014)

#74

Post by Tharre »

nishs wrote: post #23
mattparlane wrote: post #2

(2014)

And even more relevant today. Especially after yesterday's fiasco where Chrome doesn't allow installing self-made extensions permanently—forcing you to publish on the Chrome Web Store [0]. There were a few years (2010-2014) when Chrome was a clear industry leader: in design, web standards, resource consumption, and championing openness on the Internet. Not anymore, at least for me: * Firefox has built-in Reader mode…

> * Chrome hasn't embraced the WebExtensions specification (I'd love to be wrong on this).

I'm by no means an expert on this, but aren't WebExtensions based on the chrome extension API? Says pretty much that on the developers page[0] of Mozilla as well.

[0] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Add-ons/WebExtensions

Re: Choose Firefox Now, Or Later You Won't Get A Choice (2014)

#75

Post by smsm42 »

pyrale wrote: post #41
abhpan27 wrote: post #13

People choose firefox over IE because firefox was better. People choose chrome over firefox and IE because chrome is better. Want to beat google? create better. Not negativity.

The thing is, no one can reasonably outcompete Google, because they leverage every inch of their monopoly power. This is where regulation is supposed to come into play.

No one could reasonably outcompete Microsoft. Then suddenly nobody even discusses IE anymore. And tons of people use Linux.

Re: Choose Firefox Now, Or Later You Won't Get A Choice (2014)

#76

Post by sgift »

Quarrelsome wrote: post #47
jonchang wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure this is necessarily the case - Google cross-promoted Chrome extremely heavily across all its web properties, ran massive ad campaigns, and contractually obligated Android vendors to preinstall and use Chrome as the default on their handsets. Mozilla, lacking the power or money to do any of these things, wouldn't be able to compete on these fronts, regardless of who built the better product.

Firefox was over reliant on plug-ins, gave plug-ins too much power and the plug-in as well as firefox update mechanisms were messy. Chrome did more out of the box than firefox reducing the need for plug-ins, sandboxed plug-ins from destroying general browser performance and most importantly realised that updating was not a user concern and performed updates silently. There were also other innovations that Chrome did…

> _That's_ why they "won" not because of fucking adverts.

Given that Opera was basically "Chrome without Google marketing" I heavily doubt that. (The first version of Chrome was such a blatant Opera clone, it was just funny)

Re: Choose Firefox Now, Or Later You Won't Get A Choice (2014)

#77

Post by jonchang »

Tharre wrote: post #57

> Unlike Apple and Microsoft, Mozilla is totally committed to the standards-based Web platform as a long-term strategy against lock-in. This may sound great in theory, but I have serious doubts that Mozilla can deliver on that. At least from my perspective, their decisions in the more recent past have been erratic at best. They even happily implemented DRM when everyone else was doing it. At the moment it feels like…

> They even happily implemented DRM when everyone else was doing it.

This is a totally disingenuous interpretation of EME. I think you mean when Google, despite their ~open source bona fides~ with Chromium, collaborated with Microsoft and Netflix to introduce DRM to the browser and used their crushing market dominance to force Mozilla to comply or fall even further behind?

Re: Choose Firefox Now, Or Later You Won't Get A Choice (2014)

#78

Post by 72deluxe »

Tharre wrote: post #57

> Unlike Apple and Microsoft, Mozilla is totally committed to the standards-based Web platform as a long-term strategy against lock-in. This may sound great in theory, but I have serious doubts that Mozilla can deliver on that. At least from my perspective, their decisions in the more recent past have been erratic at best. They even happily implemented DRM when everyone else was doing it. At the moment it feels like…

Partially related, but they didn't demonstrate massive focus. FirefoxOS - why did they start that?

It was like they forgot why they started Firefox (I used it when it was still called Firebird) in the first place - to have a streamlined focused browser that didn't include Mozilla's other suite (email, Frontpage clone, browser) but in the end has ended up being Mozilla 2.0.

Re: Choose Firefox Now, Or Later You Won't Get A Choice (2014)

#79

Post by Fifer82 »

exergy wrote: post #54
sarreph wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. I think we've seen throughout societal history that if you want to affect change you have to do it through the path of least resistance for consumers; this means creating a better browser experience that people use not because they want to revolt, but because they gain utility from doing so.

Can I ask something? For me Firefox IS better. Chrome on Android doesnt seem to support extensions (so no uBlock), doesn't have reader view, and would highly prefer it if I signed in. Orfox and Firefox both do not have these issues. Even on desktop, I prefer Firefox (although mostly due to higher familiarity with it). Does Chrome really have some killer feature that I'm not seeing? I can't seem to figure out where ex…

It was too slow and sluggish for too long. I just fired it up, and although that is not the case any more, at the end of the day... it is useful to just be mainstream when mainstream is good. https://www.netmarketshare.com/browser-market-share.aspx?qpr...

Re: Choose Firefox Now, Or Later You Won't Get A Choice (2014)

#80

Post by nachtigall »

EJTH wrote: post #51

I would really like to support Mozilla again, but they have had an unreasonable amount of exploits recently, add to this the fact that support for my most beloved tools are gone (Firebug & TamperData) I really see no other point in sticking with FF than a political or ideological agenda.

In my experience the firefox devtools are much better (more features, better UX) than Firebug nowadays. I've been using them for one and a half years now (Firebug before).

Give it a try: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Tools/Migrating_fro... and https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Tools

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